This invention relates generally to digital scales and more particularly to a digital scale with one or more removable tools carried on the digital scale.
Convenience in daily life is becoming an increasingly important part of today""s society. Among users of weighing instruments such as scales, digital scales are preferred to mechanical scales due to the increase in accuracy they provide. A common implementation of a digital scale uses an electrostatic capacitance type weight sensor, particularly a Roberval mechanism. Examples of such capacitance-type scales are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,846,294 and 5,672,850, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
One advantage of today""s digital scale is precision combined with mobility. One problem associated with mobility, however, is that the prior art digital scales lack tools helpful for manipulating objects to be weighed, for example chemicals, food products, gems and the like. This limitation reduces the convenience of such mobile weighing instruments.
What is needed is a compact, precise and mobile scale that provides tools helpful to the user.
It is a general object of the present invention to provide an improved digital scale. More particularly, the present invention provides a digital scale for weighing and for measuring small items or objects, wherein the digital scale includes one or more removable tools carried on the digital scale which are useful for manipulating the objects to be weighed and/or measured.
More specifically, the present invention comprises a shell having a top cover and a bottom cover, a weight tray for receiving one or more items or objects to be weighed and/or measured, and capacitive means for weighing and/or measuring the object(s). Carried on the shell are one or more removable tools for manipulating the object(s) to be weighed. In one embodiment, the removable tools include a spoon and/or a tweezer.